Dug's 1959 Fleetside

[dug224]

Originally Posted by 67Mal

Love it!
Just in time for house work/yard work.

Yep...may try to work a paint job in on the truck between house innings!!

[dug224]

Snuck up on a 32' 2015 Keystone bumper pull Travel Trailer the other day at Copart. It will use it for my construction trailer. It was totaled because the back door seal leaked, wet the floor and made it soft. About 4 square feet of damage. Otherwise, perfect condition. When it's time, I may pump up the rear shocks try to pull it down to the construction site with the '59!!!

[dug224]

Truck at a standstill for now......New project moving right along.....rough site work complete and piles driven. Framing underway. In the middle of all of this, I grabbed an Intermeccanica Porsche 356 Roadster Replica to keep the truck company. Gotta have something to work on at the new place....right? I'll move the RV on-site sleeping quarters down tomorrow.

[gabe2000]

Hey Dug, glad to hear from you. Back then you were absent for awhile, then I got busy and have not work on my truck nor looked In the forum. I also, have more project: 1980 skid steer (old dino) and 1956 Morris minor that i plan to merge with miate drivetrain. Just like trailblazer merge into 1957 truck. Or (Viseverse).

https://youtu.be/R8_sUd4x5xo

I saw this project of skid steer or boat diesel 4cyl. Engine in 1955 chevy and sounds nice. Maybe I should have gone this route.

Keep up good work!!!

[G&R's57GMC]

Find out the tongue weight on the trailer before you hook up to the ‘59 it may shock you and be way to heavy for your Chevy.

[dsraven]

hey Doug, good to see you posting again. looks like you've been busy and not just with house stuff. nice roadster.
you will also need a trailer brake controller for towing the new sleep shack. I would check the weight, the trailblazer was probably not rated to tow that much but if it's a short haul....well,you know.maybe adjust the brakes on the trailer too, they don't have self adjusters on them. snap a few pics for sure.

[joedoh]

Intermeccanica Porsche 356

those are very well built and highly regarded, congrats!

[jwhotrod]

fillernecksupply.com has all your fuel hose and fittings for your filler neck, etc

[dug224]

Originally Posted by G&R's57GMC

Find out the tongue weight on the trailer before you hook up to the ‘59 it may shock you and be way to heavy for your Chevy.

Definitely too heavy. A fleeting thought. Ended up using my friends 3/4 ton diesel Chevy. Getting close to end of the build which means the RV will be for sale in the next few weeks...never having to tow it again!!!.

[dug224]

Originally Posted by jwhotrod

fillernecksupply.com has all your fuel hose and fittings for your filler neck, etc

Thanks....will get back on the truck soon!!

[dug224]

Originally Posted by joedoh

those are very well built and highly regarded, congrats!

I've discovered that! One of my best buys ever. It's been on my bucket list for a few decades. Finishing up the house and hope to be back to fooling with the truck and roadster late this year.

[dug224]

Originally Posted by dsraven

hey Doug, good to see you posting again. looks like you've been busy and not just with house stuff. nice roadster.
you will also need a trailer brake controller for towing the new sleep shack. I would check the weight, the trailblazer was probably not rated to tow that much but if it's a short haul....well,you know.maybe adjust the brakes on the trailer too, they don't have self adjusters on them. snap a few pics for sure.

Way too heavy for the '59. Used my buddies truck. House is wrapping up.

[dug224]

Thanks to the ability to live on site, we are now doing the final push to get the house completed. RV will go on the market the day I get my Certificate of Occupancy.


Build time will been about 7.5 months. Subs have showed up consistently on time which has kept us on schedule. No detectable slow down from COVID19. The best part is that I have doubled the size of my garage. Power on this week which means AC will be on as well. Currently running a 5,000 btuh window unit it the garage to acclimate the flooring. We will see how it performs once the big AC upstairs is running. Will install a mini-split (wired for two of them) depending on this study. It has been unusually dry during the entire build which has helped. My floor deck got rained on only one time before my metal roof went on. In case you did not know, Mobile, AL typically has the highest rain quantities annually. The humidity is our current nemesis followed by the influx of tourists. Tourists flowed to the beaches in record numbers after Alabama reopened the beaches.

Should be able to move the '59 Chevy and Porsche Replica over here in a few weeks. Will commence with renovating the old house once we are in the new one.

[rgunlock]

Good to see you checking in. Your house looks great, and I'm jealous of that huge veranda(?) to kick back and enjoy your water view. Congrats on being close to done!

[mongocanfly]

.looks good Dug

[dsraven]

your place really looks good, great job.

[joedoh]

be yoo tee ful place!

my shop has a house like that on the property, built on stilts with the garage under, probably normal for alabama but very unusual for ks.

[dug224]

Thanks guys! This type pile (10x10" with 18' in the ground and 12' above ground) construction is normal for coastal areas. Forgot the most important shot of all....the garage. Note that I did not put piles on a grid system. Had them installed so they would be in walls. All treated material on lower floor and I installed rigid insulation between the sheathing and the hardi panel. In the event it floods, I simply rinse out the lower floor. It is 1,703 sf but I'm going to have to give up a few square feet for my wife's play area. This is a "Pano" shot from my IPhone. My shop area is way back in the far left. Ended up with Overhead Door brand 10' wide pressure rated insulated garage doors with side mounted direct drive openers. Incredibly quiet. The 4' LED's light up the place nicely. I've got 9 more to mount. Installed five knockouts using PVC pipe in the concrete for future anchor pots in case I need to pull on anything.

[dug224]

So, we got moved in and I got my garaged all setup just in time for Sally to show up. The good news is that we moved the '59 and all of the other cars to the parking garage at The Wharf (local resort). The bad news is that we decided to stay based on a Cat 1 to Tropicial Storm prediction. My Gold Fortified building performed well (with us in it) and my flood vents did their jobs. When was the last time you drove your house down the freeway at over 100 mph??? Planning on an inch or two of water in the lower floor and ended up with 30 inches plus 10"+/- of wave action INSIDE my garage. Turned the garage into Tool Soup. Garage doors and two personnel doors gave up to the hydraulic action. Eighty gallon Compressor flipped over. Tool boxes filled with salt water. My recent Ski Nautique project boat purchase survived but floated around on its trailer banging into the hearty 10"x10" piles for a few hours. Anything below about 40" is toast. Threw all of my hand tools in soapy water and have been slowly moving them to vats of diesel fuel. Spraying CorrsionX on everything. Great product. My wife had approx 100 boxes of stuff that were yet to be moved upstairs that became part of the soup. FEMA flood will cover a few items maybe to the tune of $2k but no contents. From my house, I could see about 25 large boats in various places they were not supposed to be. Last count was that 575 boats were totaled. We got power and gas back within a week which is incredible. Incredible town, Orange Beach, AL, we now live in. While this is unfortunate and will take a few dollars and months & years to rectify, it pales in comparison to the discovery of the only fatality from the storm. I stepped out to assess the damage during the eye of the storm at daybreak and found the gentlemen who lost his life. He was 72 years old and was tending to a 42' boat during the storm that lost power and capsized. His partner survived and ended up at my neighbors house 3 doors down. All is now well here and will be shopping for some new tool boxes really soon. dug

[dug224]

You can see the water line on the outside of the building. Will install a window unit back where the other one was and commence with the drying process. All walls have been sprayed and washed. Believe it or not, the garage doors suffered minor damage and will be reassembled today. One dent in the low panel on left door. Fortunately, I put all receptacles in the ceiling and used disposable power strips at 48". Light switches mounted at normal height which was too close to the salt water. One caught fire when we turned power back on so we replaced the 10 light switches on that floor just to be safe. Whew.....

[dsraven]

wow, at least you are all unhurt. lots of hard work ahead. your building held up well though.
aside from wrapping your property with a rip rap rock berm to slow the wave action there isn't much else you couldda done though, right? not a coastal kinda guy so not sure how that all works.

[_Ogre]

glad to see you & truck survived and the house weathered the storm as designed

i spent jan 1 - march 28 mostly on the gulf coast; mobile, pascaguola, morgan city, galvaston and padre island. everywhere i went was toasted by a hurricane this summer. i get the draw of the ocean and costal zones, but every place was still rebuilding from the last hurricane. even 10 years on. i couldn't rebuild my life every couple years.

[dug224]

Gents: Had we moved to Denver as originally planned, we would not be having this conversation. That said, I'm on the north side of the island of (Orange Beach, AL ) one lot in off of the main body of water which is Wolf Bay. Before I built, the city redefined my lot as a "Zone of Moderate Wave Action". I laughed. Turns out, they were right. Many of the houses facing Wolf bay had the sand washed out from under their slabs and the slabs failed. I could have built higher but then it becomes a study on how high to go. Had I gone 36" higher, I may have been ok but I would have spent a bunch more money and could have repurchased my lost contents several times over. The smart thing to do is have NO stuff below the house. That's what the feds expect and why nothing is covered. We gambled that a storm would not hit us before we got everything sorted. We lost. Had it been next year, most of my stuff would have been higher in the garage and the 100 boxes of my wife's stuff would have not been down there.

Orge: I'm with you, rebuilding a life is expensive and time consuming. Takes away from projects. Didn't plan on rebuilding my life and, if I can work it out, won't do it again. I'll give this life a few years then move on. My 82 year old neighbor has done this 4 times.

On a lighter note, we now have two more kayaks Kayaks are on display for the rightful owner to reclaim but will reside here if nobody claims them. One of those high dollar ice chests floated up stocked full of cold beer. I saved the work bench my dad handcrafted out of misc. odd pieces of wood back in the 1950's. Had to wait on the drawers to dry so I could extract them. Garage doors are back in place.

[rgunlock]

Wow, what a mess! Glad you and yours came through it ok and that you won't have to relocate in order to rebuild, as so many do when it floods around here.

[dug224]

Originally Posted by rgunlock

Wow, what a mess! Glad you and yours came through it ok and that you won't have to relocate in order to rebuild, as so many do when it floods around here.

Thanks Rick...Agree. House is perfect so we never had to leave. Won't be staying for the next one for sure. A buddy of mine wired the place. Last thing on the list was the generator plug. Did not get it installed which is why my elevator got caught in the down position when we lost power. Lesson learned. Just flooded the cab so a cleanup required. No mechanical equipment damaged.